


The Seventh Room

by Keyade



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slow Burn, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-04-07 10:35:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14079018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keyade/pseuds/Keyade
Summary: Akira wishes life hadn’t set him up just to be locked away. He could have been born a strong Valkyrie like Makoto, a harmless Kodama like Sojiro, a slightly less harmless Witch like Futaba, a beautiful Succubus like Ann or a rare Oni like Yusuke. It’ll even be nice to be an Archangel - like that really persistent detective dude who hunts down dangerous races. Heck, he’d even be a normal non-shadow like Mishima any day.In a world where belonging to a Shadow race is commonplace, Akira had to be born a Shapeshifter -  the rarest, most cursed...and yes...most dangerous of them all.





	1. To Wear Another Skin

**Author's Note:**

> Urban fantasy AU where you see your favourite P5 characters transform like magical girls. 
> 
> Note that characters are slightly aged-up, they're all in college now. Also, shadow races are based off actual P5 enemies!

Ryuji and Yusuke are having an Oni battle. A really redundant one, since they aren’t fighting on the same terms, and Yusuke doesn’t even want to participate. Yusuke only comes to LeBlanc to get free food, to be frank.

 

“Take your stupid magic outside,” Sojiro demands with a scowl. “I don’t need you two blowing up my shop.”

 

“But we can’t spar outside,” Ryuji whines. Of course they couldn’t. The rickety district of Yongenjaya has really sensible regulations against the public display of Shadow abilities, maybe because the streets are so goddamn narrow and the buildings are so goddamn flammable. One miscalculated spark from Ryuji and there goes Tae’s entire clinic, probably. 

 

And Akira needs that clinic for his cat fur allergies. Among...other things.

 

“The Ice clan is clearly the superior Oni clan,” Yusuke declares, folding his arms. “You Thunder Oni can’t hope to match up.”

 

“Say what, Inari?” Ryuji challenges, sparks of static jumping around his horns and fingertips, their sharp cackle making Akira’s head buzz. 

 

“ _ Outside _ ,” Sojiro insists.  

 

To their credit, they actually head for the door. Out on the narrow street, Yusuke stands taller (than he already is) and the air around them drops to a sudden chill. Akira looks around carefully. It’s a good thing there are no passersby, or they’d get slapped with hostile glares at best and a police report at worst. 

 

Yusuke’s single horn begins forming on his forehead, crystalline and mesmerizing. Intricate frost patterns dance across his face and neck as his eyes glow frigid and beautiful, glimmering ice fractals in the winter sun. Glassy ice veins creep up his arms and crawl across the concrete floor towards Ryuji, and it’s very easy to understand why the Ice clan is hailed the most beautiful of the Oni. Seeing Yusuke transform is art in itself, a true visual treat. 

 

“Cut it out,” Morgana nags unappreciatively, morphing into his feline form so that he could pretend to be ‘just a street cat’ if anything goes wrong. “The neighbours will give us hell.” 

 

“Aww shut it  _ Bakeneko _ , it’s just a play fight,” Ryuji dismisses. 

 

“That I will certainly win,” Yusuke says, with the same conviction he’d say that the sky is blue or that Sojiro is balding. 

 

“All talk,” Ryuji goads, hurling a small golden bolt of lightning at Yusuke’s head with his game-on grin. To be fair, Ryuji doesn’t look half-bad in his true form either. There’s something electric about the way the light in his irises dance and Akira has heard girls whisper how hot those double red horns on his head are when he competes in the Arena. Thunder Oni horns are strangely popular with the ladies recently - something about their savage look is a turn-on, apparently. 

 

_ Everyone  _ looks better in their Shadow form. No wonder Mishima’s so salty.  

 

And good looks are always enhanced with good skill. Yusuke, possessing the unfair reflexes of his race, dodges the spark with no effort. He attempts to grip Ryuji’s right leg with a sneaky little icicle Akira almost didn’t see, but Ryuji’s clearly improved since the last time. 

 

“Ain’t gonna fall for that again,” Ryuji laughs, skipping away. “Try harder, Inari.” 

 

He sends a shower of bolts this time, which Yusuke stops with a glittering ice wall that shot up from the ground at an impressive speed. Even for a clan as prestigious and powerful as Yusuke’s, he is one of their most talented. 

 

In fact, Yusuke is unreasonably talented at whole variety of difficult things, he is a  _ goddamn  _ gem of a human being. And Akira is so profoundly proud of him. 

 

The sight before him is a marvelous one - dancing fireworks hitting a crystal barrier. Ryuji’s skill may not be as rare, but he’s certainly proficient at using what he has. What Yusuke has in gift, Ryuji earned through hard work. He may even get to be an Arena pro one day, if he could just get over his minor league team’s petty politics (and scrape pass college, at that). 

 

Yusuke steps up after that attack, going on the offensive with a volley of ice shards. Ryuji avoids them all, but one of them bounces off Akira. 

 

“Ow,” he says. 

 

“OW!!” Morgana yells. 

 

“I am sorry,” Yusuke says sincerely, getting hit with a ball of lightning as he bows. 

 

“HA!” Ryuji cheers, just as he slips comically on the iced floor and lands on his butt. In a returning low blow, Yusuke takes the chance to lock his hands to the ground with ice. He looms over his fallen opponent, hands folded and face smug. 

 

“I am victorious,” he declares, shifting back to his normal form. 

 

“Kinky,” Akira sniggers. 

 

“We’ll give you two some alone time,” Morgana smirks. 

 

“SHUT UP AND HELP ME,” Ryuji screeches, kicking at Yusuke. “My hands, ugh - are getting - frostbite - MELT THIS SHIT, INARI!!!” 

 

“I can only freeze, I cannot reverse,” Yusuke says honestly. “Maybe I shouldn’t have done that,” he adds, with a little regret. 

 

“For real?!” Ryuji yells, before lying flat on the pavement, resigned. Akira’s not too worried - electricity converts into a substantial amount of heat, Ryuji can untangle himself soon enough. So long as no one is standing close enough to the melting ice to get fried. 

 

Curry’s ready by the time they head back in, Sojiro grumbling about how much more they’d probably eat after that display. It  _ is  _ true - assuming one’s true form is an energy-heavy endeavor which usually results in an unusual appetite. More unusual than Yusuke’s usual appetite, that is. 

 

“Freeloading youngsters,” Sojiro complains, but he’s hiding a smile. He looks pointedly at Akira. “Back in the 1800s, my apprentices cooked for me, not the other way round.”

 

“Say,” Ryuji mumbles through a mouthful of rice. “How old are you exactly?” 

 

“Two thousand,” Sojiro smirks. 

 

“ _ Whoa _ , for rea--”

 

“Two hundred and eighty-four,” Akira informs.

 

“Two hundred and eighty-three,” Sojiro corrects. “I’m not that old.”

 

Ryuji snorts while the joke flies past Yusuke. Just as expected, both ask for a seconds, and then thirds. Sojiro’s had two hundred and eighty-three years to perfect the art of curry-making, so it’ll be a pity not to eat as much as they can manage. There aren’t many  _ Kodama  _ chefs left in the city nowadays - a lot of them prefer to send their long days in the solitude of most rural corners of the country, where they wouldn’t meet so many people they could inadvertently love and then outlive. 

 

Akira studies Sojiro’s face. A wrinkle for each person who left him - such is the bittersweet fate of the Kodama race. Sojiro has many wrinkles. 

 

Ryuji and Yusuke stay to chat till closing time, helping Sojiro do the dishes and draw the shutters. They leave in a good mood of the kind only an excellent meal can provide, and Akira sees them off before heading to his attic. 

 

“You’re...not gonna try that tonight, right?” Sojiro stops him. 

 

“I am,” Akira admits. 

 

Sojiro sighs like that answer’s just made him age twenty years. “You don’t have to, you know. Shido will never find you here. You’re safe with us...me and Futaba.” He looks away for a moment, exhaling into the night air. “We could live like a normal family.”

 

_ You are family to me _ , is what Sojiro is really saying, and Akira knows that.

 

Making it all the more difficult to do what he’s set on doing. 

 

“I still have Tae’s ointment. Works like a charm,” Akira reassures. “I’ll be ok.”

 

Sojiro has long given up on stopping him, but his eyes are incredibly weary. He opens the door with another sigh. 

 

“Don’t burn the shop down,” he says, like he always does, before heading off into the night. 

 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Morgana jumps off his usual spot on the table, morphing into his boy-form in the process. He hates this form - inferior human senses apparently make him feel like he’s ‘living in a cottony fog’, but it does allow him to administer Tae’s medicine immediately if Akira manages to knock himself out. Or call Tae over, if things got bad enough. 

 

“Ready?” he asks, already laying out all the items in the first-aid box, all business. 

 

Akira shrugs off his shirt. Things got really messy the last time, so he’s going to try it barebacked this time. The early April air has a chill, but it is really the memory of that searing agony from last time making him shiver. 

 

“Ready,” he breathes. 

 

“Good luck. Focus on your mental image. And for the love of God,  _ don’t go too far. _ ” 

 

Akira nods, closing his eyes. Valkyrie again this time, the transformation he’s been practicing for the past two months. Difficult doesn’t even begin to describe it. But it’s not difficult to visualize himself as one - he has the fortune of seeing a real Valkyrie transform so many times, after all. He can see, vividly in his mind, Makoto’s majestic wingspan, her exquisite polished armor, the halo of light crowning her head. The imposing sword she wielded, far too heavy even for a skilled bodybuilder, the piercing gaze that could harrow any heart. 

 

The gaze, the weapon, halo and armor can come later. Akira hasn’t even gotten past step one: the wings. Those goddamn wings. Makoto makes it look so easy, but he knows he shouldn’t hold himself up to the same standard.

 

It’s not his true form, after all. 

 

Reaching into the familiar pit of energy deep in his abdomen as he’s done so many times before, he pulls his dregs of power upwards, directing them towards his upper back. The force of it cases his muscles to itch and burn, flexing and twisting towards their limits. As power accumulates on his shoulder blades, so does the heat, that  _ cursed heat  _ which swells and swells and swells...and  _ bursts  _ through his skin, ripping flesh and breaking bone. A guttural scream emerges from his throat the same time blood-stained white feathers plough their way through the skin on his back, mercilessly clawing away tissue. 

 

“Stop-STOP!!” He can hear Morgana yelling, his panicked footsteps fast approaching. 

 

He knows why it’s this difficult, and why it’ll never get any easier. If everlasting solitude is the price to pay for being a long-lived Kodama, going to hell and back everyday is the punishment of a Shapeshifter. 

 

Makoto is a real Valkyrie, her wings are part of her true form. She deserves to transform into what she really is painlessly, swiftly, elegantly. Akira does not. 

 

_ Fitting, isn’t it? The cost of wearing another’s skin is ripping away your own. _

 

“AKIRA, PLEASE. STOP, this is too far. You’ll kill yourself - CAN YOU HEAR ME? YOU NEED TO STOP!” 

 

He feels Morgana’s little hands on his face, trying to slap him back into consciousness. The pain is so absolute, so excruciating that his vision is nothing but black spots against white nothingness. He can feel fresh blood streaming down his arms, pooling rapidly around his fingers. It hurts, it hurts so damn bad. 

 

He wants to stop - he needs to stop. He can’t do this. Not today. 

 

Stop. Stop.  _ STOP! _

 

The immense pressure of wing growth halts abruptly, his half-formed wings like blades in his back. His breathing is little more than the gasps of a drowning man, and he feels his face hit the floor as his arms give way. 

 

Funny that all he can think of now is how he took off his shirt, or how’s he gonna explain all that blood to the other people at the laundromat? 

 

He hears Morgana screaming so loudly into the phone that Tae can probably hear him through her clinic window, even without the phone line connecting them. He hopes she isn’t too busy today...he’d hate to hold up her other patients...

 

Today was a screw-up. Not his worst, but could have been better. Maybe he went a little further than he had before, just a little. Or maybe he didn’t make any progress at all. 

 

_ Again, tomorrow _ , Akira thinks, before hazy visions of wings and blood and swords pull him into a deep, dark sleep. 

 

_ Again, till I get it.  _

 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Morning comes and Sojiro must know how much he’s aching, so he doesn’t give Akira shit for ‘bloodying up his entire bloody room, bloody hell’. He sighs and sighs and doesn’t say a thing, although the look on his face tells Akira that he’d very much like to swing his curry pot into Akira’s head, if only it guaranteed the chance of knocking some sense. 

 

“My classes start in the afternoon,” Akira says, stubbornly tying his apron. “I can help till then.” 

 

“I don’t need you doing shit,” Sojiro snaps. “Don’t even think about going to classes, I’m not letting you out. Your back’s all stitched up and you can’t even stand straight.” He points threateningly at the stairs to the attic. “Go up there and lie down.” 

 

“Yeah, that’s an order,” Morgana agrees. He’s back in his cat form, sitting on the counter like Sojiro forbade him to, lapping at a dish of milk.  

 

“I heal fast, I’m ok-” 

 

Sojiro would probably have physically hauled him up the stairs at that, but the chime of a customer coming in saves him. Akira turns around, and meets the ever-smiling face of...

 

A particular local detective. Just what he needed to double his already pounding headache. 

 

“Morning, Goro-kun,” Sojiro greets, forgetting Akira for the moment. 

 

“Morning, Sojiro-san,” Akechi Goro replies brightly, his mood as opposite from Akira’s at the moment as possible. He sets down his briefcase on a chair and settles into another one. 

 

Akira makes for the stairs, praying to god he wasn’t seen - 

 

“Hello, Kurusu-kun.” 

 

Goddamnit. 

 

He’s left with no choice but to turn around with as much of a smile as he can manage, although he’s sure it looks like exactly what it is - an invalid loser with stitches in his back, trying really hard to look fine. 

 

“You don’t look so well,” Akechi remarks, because he doesn’t know how to give a man a break. “Down with the flu that’s been going around?”

 

“Yeah,” Akira says lamely. 

 

“That’s unfortunate,” Akechi says with a comforting smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. Few of Akechi’s smiles ever reach his eyes, really. There’s either some happiness blocker somewhere along his nose, or he’s being using his handsome Archangel pay on botox injections.

 

Akira wonders what the point of that is. This guy should be banned from trying to enhance his looks in any way. There is  -  _ universally acknowledged _ \- no better looking student than Archangel Akechi Goro in the entire of their college’s law faculty. It’s as if he arrived early at the lottery of life and swept all the good cards into his pockets. One card for soft immaculate hair, one card for entrancing crimson eyes only angel-races (like Makoto) can hope to have, one card for being born an Archangel in the first place, another card for truly impeccable complexion, a card for the exact type of slender frame that everyone wants nowadays, a card for the melodious tenor in his voice and the lithe way he walks...it goes on and on. 

 

Can Akira also have a few, please? 

 

People are said to be transfixed at the sight of Archangels, and it’s easy to imagine why. He really daren’t imagine Akechi at full transformation if his human form is already so aggressively, overwhelmingly flawless. It’s all part of the unique power that makes them so apt for law enforcement related work - the power to make the most dangerous races cower and fall at their feet. 

 

_ So called ‘dangerous’ races...like mine _ , Akira thinks, rather bitterly. He almost points a finger at himself.  _ This apparent ‘huge threat to society’ grows a new zit every other day but can’t even grow Valkyrie wings without nearly killing himself.  _

 

He’s so bitter it takes effort not to laugh. The stitches on his back stretch and strain, sending pinpricks of pain up his spine. 

 

“I’ll take notes for you this afternoon, don’t worry,” Akechi is saying, seemingly oblivious.

 

“We’re in different years,” Akira deflects. Because brilliant Archangel-kun is in second year and this poor excuse of Shapeshifter is just a freshie who barely managed to squeak into such a prestigious major. 

 

“I’m in that same criminal law class you’re in,” Akechi reasons. “The one that’s on this afternoon.” 

 

Ah, shit. He’d forgotten about that. 

 

“Alright then,” Akira says carefully. He tries to sound grateful. “Thank you.” 

 

“Not a problem,” Akechi says with another diplomatic smile. 

 

“I’ll...head upstairs to rest then. Won’t want to give you the flu.” Akira mentally gives himself a pat on the back - that’s pretty good escape.

 

“Angels can’t catch infections,” Akechi informs, casually foiling his plans.  

 

_ Ugh.  _

 

“But do rest,” he continues, clearly registering Akira’s antsiness long ago and finally deeming to let him go. He manages his most phony smile yet. “I hope to see you in school tomorrow!” 

 

Akira does his best imitation of a flu sniffle as he hobbles up the stairs, because something about that statement feels more like a test than a well-wish. It’s only when he’s sitting on his bed does he pinpoint the source of the unsettled feeling in his gut. 

 

There are hundreds of people in his criminal law lecture class, most of them strangers to each other. Akira usually sits in an unremarkable corner right at the back like the bum he is. Akechi is a star student who sits in the first row and answers all the questions correctly, all the time. 

 

He’s all but seen Akechi three times in Le Blanc during his part-time shifts, and only recently at that. The only reason he even recognized the Archangel is...come on, who doesn’t recognize high-profile Akechi with the Hollywood face? Akechi may have struck up conversation first like the chatty socialite he is, but if Akira remembered correctly, it was about the blends of coffee beans ( _ someone’s _ a connoisseur too, apparently). One might think they were old friends at how chummy Akechi gets (and so fast), but they’ve really only spoken once or twice prior. And they’ve never talked about college, never talked about their majors...

 

In short, it was entirely plausible for Akira to know that Akechi was in his class, and  _ definitely  _ not the other way round. Are budding detectives so observant that they remember the face of every law student (even those not in their year), the face of every random part-timer who’s ever served them coffee, and be able to associate them instantly? 

 

Is this guy going to school just to make other people feel dumb? Did he draw the card for eidetic memory as well?! That’s huge injustice, right there.

 

Unless...

...ahh, it should have occurred to him sooner, _damn it_...

 

...and it’s popular specialization for detectives nowadays, to come to think of it, with all the hoo-ha that’s been going on in the media recently about how dangerous, blah, blah...

 

...Akechi is a hunter of Shapeshifters. 


	2. Diarahan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When running away from the Hunter, the Hunted doesn't have time to heal bullet wounds.

_ ~ Shadow Race Fact! ~ _

_ Bakenekos have 2 forms - usually a cat and human child. They have no power apart from this curious morphing ability. Most of them, like Morgana, prefer their feline form. Bakenekos are a very common shadow race and are seen by society as lazy freeloaders who live off human counterparts.  _

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Ann visits in the afternoon. Because of a text convo, which went like this:

 

**Ann:** Hey! I’m going to that dessert place near your college for a sugar fix. Wanna join?

**Akira:** Would love to. But I’m not in school today.

**Ann:** Oh! Why not? 

**Akira** : Down with the flu

**Ann:** That means...you busted your back again. 

**Ann:** Right?

**Akira:** ...

**Ann:** Right?! 

**Akira:** ...

**Akira:** ...maybe a little. 

**Ann:** WTF AGAIN? Why Akira, why??? 

**Ann** : Since you can’t come to the dessert the dessert is coming to you. 

**Ann:** You’d better be in bed when I get there.

**Ann:** Or I’ll sit on your stitches. 

**Ann:** Please tell me you didn’t need stitches this time.

**Akira:** ...

**Ann:** You did. WTF.

 

And so Ann shows up with a giant mille crepe which he is now being forced to finish, because she firmly believes that sugar fixes everything. To be fair, it really does for her. Everyone says it’s just a myth, but Incubuses and Succubuses do get a boost in power from a sweeter diet, strange as it sounds. And while Akira does use the Incubus form every now and then (for the awesome,  _ awesome  _ wings), he isn’t really an Incubus, so sugar does nothing for him but increase chances of early-onset diabetes. 

 

That train of thought leads him to think that he isn’t really an  _ anything _ . It’s a rather depressing thought. 

 

“Oh yeah, Haru’s coming over too,” Ann says. 

 

“Haru?”

 

“I told her to come. For moral support!” Ann’s waves her imaginary pompoms in the air, her pigtails bouncing cheerily. 

 

_ Moral support to heal stitches? _ Akira thinks, but it’s so Ann-like that he feels a little better. 

 

Ann leans against his shelf and fiddles with the mini chocolate-fountain model she gave him back when they were still in high school. 

 

“Say,” she begins, suddenly not so cheery. “Do you still get back injuries when you take the Incubus form?”

 

“Well...” Akira stalls. “Nothing I can’t heal from in a couple of days, I guess.”

 

“You guess?! Geez, Akira, are you secretly a masochist?” 

 

“You should know. You’re a Succubus,” Akira waggles his eyebrows at her. “You know everyone’s kinks.” 

 

“And yours is tearing your own skin off your back,” Ann deadpans. She sets the fountain model back on the shelf with a huff, turning away from him. “I know I’m supposed to make you feel better but I - I just - sometimes I just wish we’d never met.”

 

“Aww, you hurt me so.”

 

“Don’t play dumb with me,” Ann glares. “I’ve known you since your dweeby high school days.” She sighs the sigh she probably learnt from Sojiro. “If we’d never met, you won’t know how to use the Incubus form. Then you won’t be almost killing yourself every other day.”

 

“I may have met another Incubus or Succubus,” Akira tried to make it sound light. “And ended up killing myself every other day, anyway.”

 

“Not funny.”

 

Akira mock clutches his heart, but Ann is proving really hard to amuse today. 

 

“I hate it when you do that,” she says, throwing up her hands. “Ugh! You Shapeshifters shouldn’t be allowed to have friends, seriously.”

 

Akira’s already got a comeback ready, but something about that comment sears through his head, leaving his tongue numb and dull. He hangs his head and looks at his always-scarred hands. The small burns and cuts here and there are temporary, but those chaff marks around his wrists may be there to stay for good. 

 

“Perhaps that’s why everyone wants us locked away,” he mumbles before he can stop himself. 

 

_ Shit. _ Why did he say that?! 

 

And Ann is staring at him with wide eyes, her demeanor rapidly softening. 

 

“No no, Akira, that’s...that’s not what I meant at all,” she says, gripping his arm tightly. “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry...I...shouldn’t have said that, I’m sorry.”

 

He offers her a small smile and pats her hand in return. “Don’t be. Although I  _ am  _ illegally charming.” 

 

Ann gives him a smack, and luckily, it’s not right on his stitches. 

 

“You’re never going back to the Cage,” she declares with gusto. She sticks a thumb to her chest for extra conviction. “I - and the others- we’ll burn the Ministry down before we let them catch you again. Even if we have to set fire to every last Archangel.” 

 

“Ann, it’s not so easy to -” 

 

“I don’t care. You’re not going back there. I promise.”

 

“I...” Akira takes a breath and does  _ not  _ think of those days long gone. He does not think of them because he can’t, because he can’t stop the deluge with his scarred hands and his marred spirit. 

 

Like the chaff marks on his wrists, some wounds close for the moment, only in wait of being reopened someday.

 

“Thank you, Ann,” he says, because when he does end up back in the Cage that someday, inevitable as the turn of seasons, at least Ann would know his gratitude. 

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Haru arrives a little late, but that’s because she’s been at Tae’s, spending a fortune on what looks like Tae’s entire dispensary. 

 

“Oh no,” Akira says. “What if someone has a life-threatening illness? You’d be guilty of murder because you took all of Tae’s medicine.”

 

“Ha ha,” says Haru dryly, pouring out a spoonful of something undoubtedly much worse than suffering back injuries, judging by its colour and texture. “Actually you’d be, since you’re the one needing all this medicine.” 

 

Akira raises his hands. “Guilty as charged. Jail for me again then.” 

 

Ann slaps him on the stitches this time. “Will you stop joking about that?”

 

“It’s my coping mechanism.” 

 

“Shut up, dweeb.”

 

Haru clears her throat delicately. 

 

“Drink it, or I’ll call the cops about a particular Shapeshifter on the loose,” she says very pleasantly, extending the spoonful of suffering towards him. 

 

“I choose the cops,” Akira says, backing away. 

 

“By cops I mean Makoto,” she replies in her nicest voice, smiling wider. 

 

Akira swallows the spoonful immediately. 

 

“Good,” Haru says, oblivious to his sputtering and asphyxiation via noxious substance. Near death aside, the medicine works immediately, sending the soothing chill of rapid healing up his back. He hates to admit it, but it’s such a relief, almost great enough to make him forget some of the mental trauma as well. 

 

_ Diarahan _ , Akira recognizes the drug. It’s something only the most talented Mandrakes can brew, and fortunately (or unfortunately) for him, Tae is a talented Mandrake. 

 

“This thing costs more than my laptop, Haru,” he says, more than a little incredulously. “You can’t get it for me.” 

 

“I already did,” says Haru nonchalantly. “I got three bottles.”

 

“You what?”

 

“Yup,” she lays them out on the counter. “One, two, three.” 

 

And it’s enough to give him full recovery for...who knows, maybe a whole year worth of failed transformations.  _ Full recovery _ , not those half-assed patch-ups he usually resorts to, sitting in class pretending that his back is not splitting in half before proceeding to actually split it in half every night. 

 

“Haru, please.”

 

“I got it, you drink it,” Haru says, as if she simply got him soup for a cold. Akira wonders how many of her company’s employees get to see this side of sweet, ladylike Haru. People who think she’s a pushover will die a horrible death by Diarahan syrup. 

 

She must have seen his slightly twitching fingers, because she switches off her scary mode. 

 

“If I can’t stop you from trying your transformations anyway, I’d rather you didn’t die,” she says, her eyes gentle. She adjusts the metal band on her wrist. “If it really makes you feel so bad, just think that I’m investing in your success...for my own sake.” 

 

And Akira, for the second time in the day, has no comeback. Because he  _ is  _ doing this for Haru. For himself. For anyone who’s ever been crushed under the leviathan and unrelenting palm of the Ministry, for anyone who’s ever had their wings clipped and locked in a Cage. He looks at Haru’s thin silver wristband, a tiny device much more dreadful than it appears. For all her wealth and influence, for all her wit and kindness, Haru can’t undo this shackle. 

 

He takes the bottles with a nod, and Haru gives him a nod in return. Ann groans, but that’s what she does when she’s rooting for him. 

 

He picks up the cup of coffee he brewed and raises it in the air. The girls chuckle at his theatrics. 

 

“To our success,” he toasts. “To freedom.”

 

“To freedom,” says Haru.

 

“To freedom,” says Ann. 

 

His goal is the same as it’s always been, from the day he first set foot in the Cage of Quarantined Races and saw its many horrors.

 

To win this truly unjust game. 

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The next morning sees Akira’s favourite detective at sitting at the counter again, twirling a small bottle of pills between his fingers. 

 

_ Crap.  _

 

He’d taken the 3 bottles of Diarahan up to his room, but he must have left some of the less conspicuous medicine Haru got on the counter. Any other customer would not have noticed it at all, but Akira doesn’t count on it slipping past sharp Archangel eyes. 

 

_ Way to go, _ Akira thinks.  _ Giving out clues to a (probable) Shapeshifter hunter as if they’re free.  _ Akechi should probably give him a cut of his bonus when he finally arrests Akira, with how easy Akira made this. 

 

“Morning,” Archangel-kun chirps, annoyingly radiant as usual. If he’s already so bright and cheery in the mornings, why the hell does he even need coffee?! Unless, of course, he’s delighted about that bounty he’ll soon be getting from arresting a sleepy Shapeshifter with a migraine, who just wants to get the  _ heck _ out of here. 

 

“Hi,” Akira replies, because there’s literally nothing else he can say. 

 

“How’s your flu?” Akechi asks. 

 

“Much better,” Akira lies. Well, not really. He was good until Akechi showed up. 

 

Akechi smiles his trademark smile, shaking the bottle of pills at him. “Who’d have thought that...painkillers and...post-stitch ointment...could be so good for a common cold.” 

 

He pretends to squint at the bottle, but Akira knows he’s carefully awaiting a response. 

 

_ It’s rude to touch other people’s medication _ , he wants to say, but he holds his tongue. 

 

“They’re for this old man,” he says instead, pointing at Sojiro. Who grunts convincingly, to his credit. 

 

“I fell in the bathhouse and had to get patched up,” Sojiro says, making a show of rubbing his hip. “Embarrassing as hell.” 

 

“Oh dear,” Akechi says, not sounding concerned in the least, the bastard. “I wish you a swift recovery.” 

 

“Hmph,” Sojiro mutters, going back to his french presses. 

 

Akira doesn’t quite manage to make it out of the door before Akechi turns his attention to him again. 

 

“Going to school?” he asks. “Wait up for me, I’m going too!” 

_ Are we friends? _ Akira almost says as Akechi drains the rest of his coffee in one gulp. With all these little snarks that he almost let slip, he’s really gonna have to watch his tongue around Akechi. Can’t afford to offend someone who’s probably out to throw him back into the Cage. 

 

And because his stunning ability to make excuses failed him at a critical moment, Akira finds himself walking towards the Yongenjaya train station with the very senpai he’s been trying to avoid. 

 

“We’ve never quite spoken,” Akechi begins, ever the star conversationalist. “It’s quite the coincidence we go to the same school, isn’t it? Kinda rare to bump into fellow law students.” 

 

_ Coincidence my ass _ , Akira thinks, his inner Ryuji giving the finger. 

 

“Yep, it’s rare,” he says instead. 

 

“How are you finding your first year? Gotta admit, it was a little tough for me, learning all that terminology.” 

 

“It’s...ok,” Akira replies, shifting his backpack so that it’s hanging between them, a barrier to block glorious Archangel vibes. Girls on the street are looking and pointing at Akechi, giggling shyly before ducking away. Mr Model-Face’s got some fans. Akira is thrilled.  

 

“Ok?” Akechi chortles. “Wow, Kurusu-kun, you must be quite the genius. I pulled all-nighters to finish my essays.” 

 

“Don’t need to pull all-nighters if you don’t write them,” Akira says, tapping a finger to his head. 

 

Akechi laughs as if it’s the funniest joke he heard all day (except it’s not a joke). “Oh Kurusu-kun, you’re really something, you know that? For a first year...wish I had the guts to do that.” 

 

“Live fast, die young,” Akira states. He’s aware there’s a wry smile on his face. It’s literally what he’s doing right now, still hanging out with his captor-would-be, taking the goddamn  _ train  _ as if they were both goddamn  _ normal people _ . 

 

“Your attitude...is truly one of a kind,” Akechi says, cocking his head in curiosity. “If you don’t mind me asking, Kurusu-kun, why is someone like you studying law?”

 

“Oh no, do I look that dumb? Must be the glasses...”

 

“Very funny. I meant..,” Akechi stalls, trying to find the words to say. “I...I really don’t mean any offense, but as an Archangel, I can see that you’re a non-Shadow. Aren’t you?”

 

Akira nods, because for some reason the lump in his throat is preventing him from uttering a direct lie. 

 

But at least for some reason, Akechi seems just as uncomfortable. He adjusts his striped tie and coughs, as if to dislodge words caught in his throat as well. 

 

“It’s probably not my place to ask,” he says, choosing his words delicately. “But...why do you choose this path? The legal and law-enforcement fields are only welcoming to those of an Angel-race...as I’m sure you’re aware.”

 

Akira shrugs - a nonchalant-looking move he’s perfected in all his years of hiding. “I just want my resume to look impressive, I guess,” he says.

 

“That’s an...interesting mindset,” Akechi says, looking a bit incredulous.

 

“Or someone might overtake Shido as Head of the Ministry, and that rule’s gonna change,” Akira adds. 

 

Akechi glances at the floor at this, his expression clouding into something unreadable for just a split second. He recovers fast, plastering another smile on his face. He must have many go-to smile templates. 

 

“I doubt that’s going to happen anytime soon. The Shido Administration is going strong as ever...and the Angel-only rule has been around for decades.” 

 

Akira shrugs again. “Too bad for me then,” he says.

 

Akechi studies him for a few moments, as if staring hard enough would put a crack in his cover. 

 

“I hope I didn’t offend you,” he finally says, glancing at him carefully from the corner of his eye. “But I...admire your spirit, if anything. You know, challenging status quo.” 

 

“That’s too high praise for me, I’m really just a bum hoping to scrape by.” 

 

Akechi gives a small chuckle at that, but there’s no real mirth in his voice. “I’m sure you’re not a bum, Kurusu-kun,” he says, in a tone that implies ‘I smell bullshit and the smell is strong’. 

 

“I live in an attic, I don’t write essays, I freeload off my uncle,” Akira says, somehow determined to prove his lack of investigation value. “I’m a bum.” 

 

But Akechi simply scoffs good-naturedly and waves goodbye as he heads off to his own class, shifting his briefcase from one hand to another as if he’s collected lots of juicy new evidence today that can be put inside, until it’s finally full enough to arrest this particular attic bum. 

Akira watches him go, taking a deep breath and steading his slightly jittery hands, willing his undoubtedly frazzled expression back into its default aloof state.

 

This is not the last he’ll see of Akechi,  _ oh _ , far from it. 


	3. The Metamorphosis

Here’s a tidbit for you guys, I doodled the characters, the way I imagined them!

If you're on **mobile** , please **pan left and right** to see the whole picture :)

 

 If you liked them, you can find more of my art at **Keyade** on Tumblr and **KeyadeArt** on Insta/Twitter.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

_~ Shadow Race Fact ~_

 

_Archangels are the strongest and most revered of the angel-races. In addition to being able to fly and have a ‘harrowing effect’ on people’s hearts, Archangels can discern one’s race even when unmanifested, earning them the nickname ‘all-seeing’. They are able to identify dangerous races instantly, with the exception of Shapeshifters - on which their all-seeing eye strangely does not work._

 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

There are no lifts in law school, which really sucks, because the classroom buildings are kinda tall. But why build lifts (or even stairs for that matter), when the vast majority of the student population are Angels?

 

Akira knows all his fellow stair-climbers, he can count them on one hand. Wouldn’t Akechi be so bewildered to find that there - in fact - other other non-Angels crazy enough to try enter a world too high up in the skies for them?

 

One of these crazy people is Mishima Yuuki, a timid freshman in Akira’s class who’s not just a non-Angel, but a _non-Shadow to the boot_. Akira truly admires...his guts.

 

He’s never asked about it, because it’s so evident from the way Mishima speaks in classes why he so adamantly wants a place in a world where he’s so clearly a misfit. The way Mishima is huffing and puffing as he climbs up seven storeys of stairs is an apt reflection of the way he struggles to keep up in a class where everyone else was already somewhat familiar with the syllabus, considering that they’ve all been raised in families of law enforcers, some for generations.

 

“Say, Akira,” Mishima complains, his forehead damp. “How come _you_ never fail tests? You’re a non-shadow too! You don’t have a background in the legal industry!”

 

“My mother is an Archangel,” Akira says, adding another half to his lie counter for the day. Half, because she... _was_ an Archangel.   


Can’t be an Archangel anymore if she’s probably with real angels in a peaceful place somewhere up there. Akira wonders if she’s flying again, surrounded by gentle souls just like her.

 

“Whoa,” Mishima says, clearly taken aback. “I...never knew! And how about your father?”

 

“Non-shadow,” Akira replies, adding 1 to his lie counter. His counter is currently at 12.5 for the day, and it’s not yet past 10am (blame Akechi). If Sojiro had a new customer for every lie Akira told, he’d be a celebrity barista.

 

Mishima gives him a sympathetic look, like he’s really sorry that Akira had been given a rare pocky flavour in the game of life, but somehow got the end with just stick. “I guess that explains why you’re not a Shadow. Me too, both my folks are non-shadows. It’s so lame.”

 

It’s Akira’s turn to be a little taken aback.

 

“It’s...not lame,” he says. “60% of the world are non-Shadows.”

 

Mishima kicks a piece of tissue left on the floor with clumsy vigour. “Yeah, but...compared to everyone else here, I feel like nothing. Like a zero with no talents.”

 

 _I’d trade with you any day,_ Akira almost says on impulse, and thank god he doesn’t. Mishima mistakes his expression for something else.

 

“Oh-I’m sorry,” he says, bowing twice in a row. “I...didn’t mean to say you’re lame. I mean, you’re a non-Shadow yes, but you’re cool...like Shadow cool, in a way I can’t explain.”

 

Akira feels his chest deflating, and he adds one to the lie counter just because he can’t bring himself to correct Mishima. He’s gonna bust 30 on the counter today at the rate it’s going. A few students walk past, a Valkyrie, a Gatekeeper and a Norn, and Akira doesn’t need Oni-level hearing to know that they’re gossiping about two non-Shadow losers hanging out together.

 

“It’s my dashing good looks,” he says, bumping Mishima’s shoulder to distract him from noticing.

 

“Bleh,” says Mishima. “Says the guy with no girlfriend.”

 

“They can’t handle all this personality.”

 

It’s nice to see Mishima finally laugh a little rather than always look like a drawn bowstring, the way he does in class. “Shut up,” he chuckles. “Your Shadow power is narcissism.”

 

“And yours is that incredibly smart head of yours,” Akira returns smoothly, knocking lightly on Mishima’s temple. Mishima stares at him incredulously, but Akira simply points at the Valkyrie who made a jab at them earlier.

 

“See that bento box in her bag?” Akira says. “I live near her and I know her housekeeper made it. She can’t even cook a meal on her own, and you? You can design websites, you’re pretty great at volleyball, and guess what - you’re perfectly capable of making your own lunch.”

 

Mishima shuffles his feet. “Well, that’s --”

 

“Angels aren’t all that great, Mishima. What they have in power they lack in common sense.” Akira pauses, clearing his throat because he hadn’t spoken so much in a while. Something’s come over him all of a sudden, and he has a good idea what it is.

 

“It’s the same for every other Shadow race out there. To gain power, you’ve gotta give up something. And sometimes, the cost...” and his voice catches, just a little, “...is far greater than what it’s worth.”

 

The wounds on his back are completely gone, but for some reason, he can still feel them itching and burning. It feels like snakes trying to crawl out of his skin, parasites eating away at his bones.

 

If Mishima noticed his sudden silence, he didn’t bring it up.

 

“You’re right, Akira,” is all he says. “I came here to prove that non-Shadows can be just as capable as any Angel. You’ve made me remember, so thank you.”

 

“No biggie,” Akira shrugs.

 

Mishima throws him a smile and waves. “I’m off to class, see you at lunch!”

 

“See you,” Akira says, rotating his sore shoulders. They still be sore, but that’s no excuse not to push further tonight. He’s got the three bottles of Diarahan now...it’s gotta be better now, isn’t it?

 

And for being unusually chatty today, Akira cheats and takes 3 points off his lie counter.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Sojiro’s out for the night, so Akira meets Yusuke and Futaba at Odaiba for dinner. It’s a little out of the way, but Yusuke wants to sketch life around the Rainbow Bridge and Morgana _loves_ the seafood. They settle for a fusion cuisine sushi place that won’t bust Akira’s student wallet (too much), seeing as he essentially has to pay for everyone - Morgana is a smug freeloader, Yusuke never remembers his wallet, and Futaba’s just a highschooler.

 

They’re _all freeloaders_ , in short.

 

Their food arrives really fast because it’s just a fact of life that the cheaper the food is, the sooner it comes. And as a bonus, the taste is good enough that Morgana forgets to complain about having to sit in his human form. The owner is a Kodama too, a _very old_ acquaintance of Sojiro’s, and they get the float drinks on the house.

 

They sit and chat for way longer than their meal entitles them to, but the owner doesn’t seem to mind at all. Yusuke takes out his sketchbook again and begins doodling what looks suspiciously like a portrait of Akira in half-transformation.

 

“It’s going to be a painting for my graduation show,” Yusuke explains with exuberance as great as his pencil strokes. “The Metamorphosis, I’ll call it. A butterfly goes through a trial of suffering to unfold its wings and break out of its cocoon.”

 

“Way to bring up a sore spot, Inari,” Futaba says, stealing an inari from Yusuke’s plate.

 

“You didn’t even ask for his permission,” Morgana says, stealing another.

 

The idea of that seems to have just occurred to Yusuke. He looks at Akira in a sort of alarm, and their drinks begin frosting over a little, as they always do when Yusuke is slightly panicked.  

 

“Can I paint you? I can, right?”

 

‘Sure,” Akira says, prodding the thin layer of ice on his coffee with a fork. He looks at the delicate frost patterns spreading out from Yusuke’s fingers on the table. “Conceal, don’t feel,” he sings with a smirk.

 

“Don’t let them know,” Futaba supplements.

 

“That joke is so old,” Yusuke huffs, attempting to rub the frost away, only succeeding in spreading it further. He glares at it with furrowed brows.

 

“Chill, dude,” Futaba goads, before Yusuke stabs her with an elbow.

 

Akira decides to save him. “Just don’t reveal my identity in your painting,” he says. “I’m cooler that way.”

 

“Of course I won’t,” Yusuke says, rather displeased that Akira would even think he would. He raises his hands dramatically. “If you get caught and go back to the Cage, I will lose the muse I’ve spent so long looking for. I’ll never be able to do my graduation show!”

 

“Is that all you care about, Inari?” Futaba says, giving him a dusty look.

 

“You know who your real friends are,” Morgana confirms, back in cat form and licking his paws, because restaurant regulations are overrated.

 

Yusuke takes in a very indignant breath. “I _most_ certainly - “

 

The shrill clatter of shattered glass halt his words. They spin around in tandem to see a woman in an expensive-looking dress looming over a man on the floor, fragments of glass in the space between them, red wine across the floor. It doesn’t take much exposition to notice that _she_ pushed him over and hurled the glass.

 

“Go back to your hole, you _useless baboon_!” she shrieks, picking up the bread basket and slinging it his way. It crashes against his head, scattering crumbs all over his suit.

 

“What?” says Morgana, the hairs on his neck standing, his tail high and back arching in latent fury.

 

Akira hasn’t heard that term in a long time. “Baboon” is possibly the most offensive way to refer to a _Thoth_ \-  the race of professors, rocket scientists and mathematicians, bookish and placid people who’ve made remarkable contributions to science, medicine and the arts, one of the most intelligent races to walk this earth. Most of them can take a primate form - quite like how Morgana has a cat form - but they very seldom do by virtue of their diplomatic natures.

 

“I...I love you, I really do,” the Thoth man pleads, “T-tell me what I can change. I’ll do it - I’ll become someone you’re proud of being seen with!”

 

The woman throws her head back in hysteria, her laughter ugly and foul. “Change?” she smirks. “Tell me, can you change your race? Can you sprout wings and fly? I deserve no less than an _Angel_ in my life, not some poor old academic like you!”

 

“I love you more than any Angel can,” the man beseeches, going on his knees.

 

“He must be possessed, to love such a _monster_ ,” Yusuke sighs, and Akira very much thinks the same.

 

As expected, the plea only serves to incense the woman further. Her face contorts into something far deadlier than mere derision as threads of golden light begin to converge around her torso.

 

“Wait, what?” Futaba says, clutching Akira’s arm with her eyes wide. “Is she manifesting? Here?!”

 

“She’s breaking the rules,” Morgana says, _in cat form_ at that. “Oh god, this is bad.”

 

And it really is, because the woman has unfolded her fully formed wings to reveal the silhouette of an _Archangel_ , of all things. He’s had almost a lifetime of dealing with the effect of gazing upon Archangels, but the terror still creeps into him and grips every muscle in his body, leaving them too numb to even twitch. With effort, he manages to look around the restaurant at the other patrons, and sees that his friends don’t have such a luxury - they are shell shocked and petrified, rooted to the ground like stone gargoyles, frozen except for the occasional tremor that rattles their bodies.

 

 _This is what it means to harrow people’s hearts._ To inflict fear so great that they surrender the will to fight. A power exclusive to Angel races, and by far most well manifested in Archangels. And nobody is screaming, because they simply can’t.

 

“A-A-Akira,” Futaba sputters, trying to burrow into his coat. Akira wishes it were enough to shield her from the too-bright rays of the being before them, the radiant splendor and beauty that is too much for human souls to bear.

 

His mother has never used this partisan power on him, especially not casually, except for that one time when he pushed a fellow kid into a drain back in elementary school when he was still a spoilt little twat.

 

(He never did that again, obviously.)

 

The Thoth man, if pitiful before, has been reduced to a grovelling mess of shivers and whimpers. He inches backwards in utter trepidation, until he’s backed against the wall and there’s no room left to retreat.

 

“Never show your face to me again,” the Archangel says, her voice little short of _almighty_ and evoking small gasps of dread all around. Morgana jumps into Akira’s bag.

 

Slowly, she descends, the light enshrouding her body dimming into nothingness as her wings fold and dissipate. Her feet touch the ground with practiced grace, and she picks up her shawl in a single swift motion, turning her heel and making a beeline for the door. She slams it shut so hard behind her that the bell drops, and with its metallic clatter, the patrons of the restaurant are released from their trance. The conversation and dissent swell around Akira as he watches the woman through the windows, walking away with haughty steps and a haughty face.

 

She suddenly trips on a curb and stumbles just a step. Akira snaps his head back to Futaba, who, sure as day, is pointing a finger at the woman.

 

“Stop it,” he says, swatting her hand. “She’ll know it’s you.”

 

“I just had to get her,” Futaba says through her teeth, her tiny body shaking in anger. “Urghhhhhhh!! I want to get a car to run over her!!!”

 

“If only you were that powerful,” Yusuke sighs. “I’d want to do that too.”

 

“Stay out of this guys,” Morgana tuts. “It’s no use going up against Angels. They do their shiny wings thing and we shut up, it’s the way the world works.” He shifts back into his human form just so that he can drive a fist into the table. “Although I’d like to scratch out her eyes.”

 

“She’ll just grow them back,” Futaba whines, stabbing her float with her straw. “Gosh, I hate, hate, _HATE_ Angels.”

 

She catches herself a little belatedly and glances at Akira, twisting her fingers sheepishly. “With the exception of your mom, I mean...”

 

“And Makoto,” Yusuke says. “And Sae.”

 

The others hum in agreement at that, but there’s a sudden cold in Akira’s stomach that has nothing to do with the float he’s drinking. His gut twists and his heart lurches at a thought.

 

Today has proven that he has almost no resistance to the harrowing effect of Archangels, if anything. It’s strange, and more than a little frightening. He’s not as tough as he remembers, from the days he could slip past Cage guards in full manifestation without his knees shaking too much.

 

What gives? Has his transformation attempts made him weaker? Has the safety of Sojiro’s brusque care made him complacent?

 

He knows how this could all end, he knows it clearly...

 

...and it’s that when Akechi really comes for him, he’ll be as powerless as an ant in a ring of fire, with no way to escape the grip of those harrowing, All-Seeing red eyes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact, Akira’s college misadventures are an autobiography of my own law school days - I was quite the misfit who had to climb stairs, because lifts never worked. At least I stayed in shape haha. 
> 
> As always, it’s hard work to churn out drawings and chapters for this story, so a review would really make my day!


	4. The Guillotine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Much torture incoming, you've been warned.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

_ ~ Shadow Race Fact ~ _

_ There are three known types of Oni in the world - Thunder, Ice and Fire. Of the three, Ice Oni are the rarest and most powerful, making only one in a thousand in the Oni population. There’s an heated ongoing debate about whether they should be considered a dangerous race as well, and as a result, members of the Ice Clan tend to be formal and distant, rarely socializing outside the clan.  _

 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

It’s completely dark by the time Akira returns to Yongenjaya, and the dingy street lamps of the rundown district aren’t enough to stop him from almost face-planting over a curb. Morgana snickers because he has night vision, that  _ bastard _ . 

 

Public amenities around these parts are falling apart by the year, and there’s an old couple down the street complaining about exactly that as they discuss the rusty electrical poles swaying in the wind. Rusty is an understatement - Akira feels that he could get tetanus just by looking at them. 

 

It’s not hard to guess why things are this way. If goons like Masayoshi Shido make up the most of Parliament in god-forsaken country, it would be too much to expect things turning any better anytime soon. After all, the likes of Shido would never set foot in the parts of the city that are truly breaking at the seams. 

 

The cafe is dark too because Sojiro closed a bit earlier today, which means Akira has the whole place to himself. 

 

And that also means it’s time to make another gamble. Maybe he’ll get lucky today and grow one more feather than usual? Maybe he’ll even manage the whole thing this time. Maybe. 

 

By the time he sets down his bag and takes off his coat, Morgana is already in his boy-form, an opened bottle of Diarahan in hand. If not for Morgana, Akira would have probably died fifty times over, and the sad thing is that it’s  _ not  _ a figure of speech. 

 

“Ready when you are,” Morgana says. 

 

“Right,” Akira replies, his hands damp but his throat really dry. He wants to say more but he really can’t - his vocal chords are clenched and there’s a dull dread thumping in every fibre of his being. He’s cold and it’s not because he’s not wearing his shirt - the chill comes from the marrows of his bones, like the time he told Yusuke to try freezing him during sparring. To check if his cushy cafe life has really made him weaker, to see if he could break out of it on his own. 

 

(It has, and he couldn’t.) 

 

Akira can live with prickling cold of anxiety if he’s managed to survive the cold of those Cage days long gone. What’s really hard to live with, especially at this very moment, is the ghost of uncountable scars stinging his back when he knows the real ache is in his soul. 

 

Whoever invented exposure therapy clearly hasn’t dealt with exhausted Shapeshifters, because this  _ shit _ never,  _ ever  _ gets any easier. The reverse is much more likely. 

 

His heart is doing a tap-dance it knows all too well. He drops to one knee and places his hands on the wooden floor to steady them, breathing deep and long. 

 

One thousand, two thousand, three thousand...

 

The power swells from his stomach to his chest, then to his shoulders and webbing across his back. It surges and swirls beneath his skin, looking for an opening to squirm through. He wills it to converge around his shoulder blades, at that all-too familiar spot, beneath scars of scars. The sharp iron zest of blood permeates the air around him, and he hears Morgana patter closer. 

 

“Deep breaths, deep breaths,” Morgana soothes, his voice a sliver of life Akira clings to. “One feather at a time, one at a time.”

 

It’s like giving birth to a leviathan within - there’s a monster full of sharp ages skulking just beneath his skin. It’s like tearing away everything he is to embrace uncontainable chaos. 

 

Valkyrie, valkyrie, valkyrie. 

 

He can do it. His bond with Makoto is strong, she believes in him as much as she believes in that night will give way to day. The Valkyrie form is an easy transformation, one of the first few he’s mastered as a child. It should be nothing compared to taking an Archangel form, nothing at all. 

 

He’d been able to do it before. This should be nothing. 

 

He can...he  _ should be able to  _ easily do it again. 

 

Except that he can’t, because there’s something burning, something breaking, something screaming...something falling...wrecking a crevice through the most firmly locked parts of his mind. 

 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

3 years ago: 

 

The guards are on higher alert than usual, because Nakanohara failed to escape. Akira doesn’t know if he managed to survive that steep drop, and he prays he hasn’t, because Nakanohara would have preferred the freedom of eternal rest. 

 

To fly as far as the ends of the world and breath in a view unimpeded by ever-present bars. It’s what Nakanohara has always wanted.

 

But Akira does know that the guards’ rounds have increased in frequency from every half hour to every fifteen minutes, which means that his conversation with Shinya keeps getting cut short, which is really,  _ really  _ frustrating.

 

“You still gonna do it?” Shinya sighs from his enclosure. He looks a little sickly today, but Akira is sure he does too. The shackles are draining more energy from them than usual thanks to the high-alert status -  the guards want them all slumped on the floor and too exhausted to add on to the trouble there already is today. 

 

And also to utterly crush their spirit, in case Nakanohara’s attempt stirred anything like hope. 

 

:”Yeah,” Akira confirms. It’s just his luck that they decided to go on high-drain today, but it’s his only chance. The computing bug that causes a  weak spot on the Guillotine’s forcefield only happens once in 3 months, and Akira would sooner opt to let the guards shoot him full of bullets than wait another damn cycle for his chance. 

 

Dead on his feet or not, it’ll just have to be today. 

 

He flexes his hands and kicks his legs a little to test his strength, and it’s  _ not good _ . His limbs are jittery and frail today, and it’s taking an unreasonable amount of energy to sit rather than sprawl on the floor. He studies the other enclosures around him - he’s the only one still adamantly leaning against the bars in a relatively upright position - everyone else has either been drained unconscious or are fighting to keep their eyes open. 

 

They know what he’s going to do, and they don’t even have enough will left to laugh at him. They just give him tired looks which plainly say,  _ why even try? _

 

Akira wonders the same thing, and he wonders if he’s truly gone mad in this place. It’s so easy to. Insanity calls out to him everytime he moves, even the slightest bit, and feels the sharp chaff of metal against his wrists and ankles, when the incessant clinking of his own chains keep him up at night. It calls him every minute and every second, whenever he can feel the slow pull on his life-force through the damned shackles that weigh more than his downtrodden spirit, eating away at him and everything he fought to live for. It calls him whenever he tries to stretch his legs fully and finds that he can’t, because this goddamn  _ animal pen _ that he’s cooped up in is smaller than his old apartment elevator. The ache in his joints makes him want to tear his own skin, claw at his own face _.  _ He just wants to stand straight, to stretch out his hands and feet, to extend his wings all the way and breath the air of an open, open space. 

 

It’s been two years. Two years of throwing himself against the sides of his enclosure hoping it’ll crack, of tugging at his own shackles so hard that he’s probably permanently scarred his wrists, of yelling his throat hoarse to be let out, if only a minute or two...only to be laughed at, mocked, kicked around and beaten like misbehaving beasts. 

 

_ Fuck  _ these chains.  _ Fuck  _ this cage.  _ Fuck  _ the entire system. 

 

They have no right to do this to him. They’ve got no right to keep him in this living hell and leer at him through the bars.  _ He is not an animal.  _

 

Something small and soft hits his leg, and Akira looks down. It’s a scrap of a bread roll, a stale piece of leftover that is means everything to an inhabitant of the Cage. 

 

“I can’t have this,” he says at Shinya. “It’s your dinner.” 

 

“I’m not hungry,” says Shinya, but his stomach growls louder than his voice. 

 

“Shinya, I -”

 

“Just take it. You need it more,” Shinya says, his voice quivering and his face turned away. “Eat it and get out of here.”

 

“Come with me.” 

 

The boy shakes his head like he’s done a hundred times before. “No. You go. This is where I belong.” 

 

“This is not a place for any human being to belong,” Akira says, his anger rising and giving him the energy to ram a fist into the bars. “Shinya, you’re so young, you’ve got a whole life ahead of you. Why won’t you just -” 

 

Shinya hits the bars with his fist as well, an the clang of it echos for a small eternity. None of the inmates look at them - they don’t care anymore. 

 

“I’m  _ nothing  _ without my power,” Shinya sobs, fighting tears and losing. “Don’t you understand? Flying through the Guillotine will take away everything I have. I’ve never lived out there, I don’t know how to. I can’t.” 

 

“I can teach you,” Akira says, gripping the bars, desperation making his voice rise. The guards may very well hear him and he doesn’t care anymore. “We’re Shapeshifters, we can learn anything! Living outside is easy, you’ll see -” 

 

“No.”

 

Shinya’s eyes are glassy and resolute, and Akira knows he’s already lost the battle. 

 

“I’m better off here,” he says. “You live your life, I’ll live mine.” 

 

Shinya shifts into his Ice Oni form with what is clearly the last of his energy and raises a shaky hand. Akira scrambles to stop the ice barrier forming between them with something,  _ anything _ , but it’s too late. 

 

“This is goodbye,” Shinya says softly, looking into his eyes for the last time. “I wish you happiness.” 

 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Night falls way too slowly, and by the time it does, the exertion of staying on his feet is already almost more than he can take. If not for Shinya’s extra bread roll, he’d have already passed out, without a doubt. 

 

The guards pass methodically, once every fifteen minutes. They haven’t realized he’s gone, but that won’t last long. Give or take another hour, the alarm will be raised, and they will be combing the Cage in a frenzied search for him, the dangerous little Shapeshifter. They’ll crack open every last electrical riser until they find him, crouching and shivering, wasting his energy on a Thunder Oni form so that he doesn’t get fried by the circuits. 

 

Akira has no all-seeing eye, but he can feel the power signatures of every being that passes him. Archangels have the strongest harrowing force and Gatekeepers have the weakest, Valkyries and Norns in between. He listens carefully to each pair of footsteps, waiting for one particular pair. 

 

It arrives after 5 sets of guards have passed, quieter than the rest. The difference is very subtle - it’s the same thudding of military boots except accompanied by no harrow. 

 

There it is. He’s really come for Akira, like he promised. 

 

The door of his electrical riser opens slowly, and Akira’s heart hammers loud at the rush of light, even though he knows he is in no immediate danger. 

 

“Hey,” Iwai says, sounding mildly impressed. “You actually made it this far.” 

 

“I’m totally drained,” Akira croaks. 

 

Iwai helps him hobble out of the cramped space and holds up a tiny green vial. He looks around furtively and stuffs it into Akira’s hand. 

 

“This is?” 

 

“Diarahan. Top secret military medicine. Restores your vitality, drink it.” 

 

“But-” 

 

“We’ve only got fifteen minutes till the next patrol, kid. You’ve got to trust me.” 

 

Akira decides that if he’s gonna end up dead today anyway, he needn’t worry about Iwai poisoning him a bit earlier. He closes his eyes and tilts the vial into his throat, its repugnant contents burning down his gullet. Gross as it is - like a battery on rapid charge, his muscles stop twitching, his breathing evens out and his head stops spinning. Energy floods back into his body, warming his fingertips and soothing his bunched nerves like a hearty meal he’s not had for two years. 

 

“It’s magic,” he says, looking at the empty vial in wonder.

 

“Mandrake magic,” Iwai confirms, grabbing his wrist and tugging him along. “Hurry, we’ve got to keep moving.” 

 

They spend the next eternity dodging from shadow to shadow, hovering behind pillars and shelves and sharp corners. Iwai tells him to stay back a few times as he dashes forward and leaps onto unsuspecting solo wardens, taking them out with a sharp knock to the head with the handle of his rifle. He signals only when the coast is absolutely clear, and Akira scuttles behind like a newborn duckling. 

 

He may be a Shapeshifter, but he’ll never be as cool as Iwai. 

 

They’re almost at the end of the maze of corridors when the alarm blares, its shrill wail rousing gasps and shouts and rapid footsteps from all the corridors around them. 

 

“Missing inmate 030317. Missing inmate 030317,” the PA wails, siren reds flashing all around them. “Commencing lockdown. Commencing lockdown. Search the facility and capture at once.” 

 

“Fuck,” Iwai grits, attempting to blast through a shutter but missing by a hair. “They’ve fucked up the route.” 

 

Akira’s heart is threatening to claw out of his throat, but with what’s left of his willpower after two years, he shakes off Iwai’s hand. 

 

“Go,” he says through clenched jaws threatening to give way to a sob. “Don’t risk your own neck. Leave me.” 

 

And although he’s been beaten more times than he can count with whips, barbed wire, belts, boots, fists and sometimes even chairs, he’s never quite been  _ slapped  _ here in the Cage. It’s an extremely odd sensation - disorientating, stinging, but steeped with the overwhelming realization that the hand which struck him is hurting just as much. 

 

“Don’t fuck with me, kid,” Iwai says, his palm still red and raised. “If I said I’ll get you out, I’ll get you out, even if I have to nuke this whole place.”

 

Akira has no response to that, and he feels himself being tugged forward with strong arms and an even stronger back. Iwai is morphing into his Oni form as he stalks forward, fire gathering around his silhouette and heat cackling in the air. 

 

“Cover your ears,” is all the warning Iwai gives before he slams a fireball into the door, leaving a glowing hole of melted metal in the door. The distant shouts of tens and hundreds of guards are suddenly close. So close, like they’re right beyond the next bend. 

 

Then they round that bend, rushing towards Akira with their tasers and cuffs and what looks like twenty loaded rifles. 

 

“Archangel form, now!” Iwai commands, barely giving Akira time to transform as the walls around them collapse in flames, singing the tips of the wings Akira just managed to summon in time. Akira flies up to avoid the lick of fire, while Iwai runs through the blaze, protected by his tough Oni skin. 

 

Iwai hails fire at the barred window, and Akira knows without being told to fly out of it as fast as he can. The sudden gush of cold air almost causes him to lose grip on his transformation and fall into a fiery death. 

 

It’s fresh, fresh,  _ blessed fresh air.  _

 

His wings are fully unfurled, his hands and feet fully extended. There are no metal vices on them for the first time in two years, and he feels light, so light, as if he can float to the moon on a gust of wind in the open, open night sky. He feels an entirely unexpected sting in his eye and it’s only when he raises his hand to rub it does he realize his cheeks are damp. 

 

They could shoot him now and Akira would die happy, because he’s breathed the open air and seen the open sky, as if he was...if he dared think it,  _ free _ . 

 

“YO, KID!!” Iwai yells. Akira spins around faster than he’s ever remembered he could, his sharp Archangel eyes finding Iwai’s face in the burning debris easily and bringing into hyperfocus. If only the whole Cage burned like this, it would really look like the hell it is.

 

“See that spot on the Guillotine?” Iwai continues, his voice rasping with smoke and exertion. “Use your Angel eyes and you’ll find it. Fly, fly fast!!” 

 

And Iwai knows what he’s talking about, because if there were twenty guns trained on Akira then, there are now a hundred, sticking out like deadly little daggers from each window in the massive Cage building, all determined to make sure he never gets to see the world outside again. The sirens are so loud that they can be heard clearly even from this height, and they’re screaming, screaming at him to come down and surrender at once. 

 

Like hell he’ll ever surrender to being treated like livestock again. 

 

He trains his eyes on the hexagon-patterned dome forcefield above, studying their sinister purple pulse and narrowing his eyes at each corner where one shape joins the next. The Guillotine glows brighter at night, its disconcerting light a sinister reminder of what would happen to anyone who had the gall to challenge it. A bullet whizzes past his cheek and another strikes him square in the right wing, but Akira feels an almost crazed giggle bubbling up his throat. He’s got to thank them for manhandling him so carelessly over the past two years - the sting of bullets right now is  _ nothing  _ compared to what he’s been through. 

 

He doesn’t stay put and hovers like a dragonfly, finding the weak panel just when the bullet-hail is starting to completely cripple his wings. It’s a patch that glows ever so slightly thinner than the rest, so small that if he were to fold his wings in as much as they can go and dive-bomb through them, he may just scrape through.

 

One chance is all he gets. 

 

It’s a gamble of phenomenal risks. One degree off, one feather out of line, and he’ll be turned into crisp so rapidly that they won’t be in time to collect his ashes. He’ll be just like Nakanohara, dead at 18, dead because he tried to do the impossible. Only one person has ever been able to pass its spartan trial - one inmate, also a Shapeshifter, also a kid, has managed to traverse the untraversable barrier. 

 

Akira is determined to become the second. 

 

But even if he made it through, he won’t be unscathed. These wings on his back that he so loved, that he was so proud of as a child, that were the best thing he could master as a Shapeshifter, that were part of his earliest memories and deepest identity, that landed him in hell then broke him out of it...would be stripped away forever. 

 

The Guillotine is blind, it takes all, it takes from everyone. Its first escapee wasn’t spared, and neither would its second. 

 

He’s thought about this. He’s made his choice. 

 

Between freedom or shapeshifting, he’ll pick freedom anyday, even if it means severing the wings on his back and cutting away everything and everyone he knows and cherishes. He thinks about Shinya, about Nakanohara, about the other kids in his Cell Block...and about Iwai. 

 

“Go, kid!!! JUST GO!” 

 

Akira wants to look at gruff, tired Iwai one last time, but the flames have become high walls, making everything below little more than a red, fiery confusion. So he gathers every bit of anger he has, every last shred of fury at the indignity of being forced into this prison, every pit of fire in his soul, and kicks into the air. 

 

_ He’s once broken a leg when he was ten, trying to fly off the top of his house when his mother wasn’t looking. It was going well until he tripped on the curb of the roof and tumbled a storey down, landing awkwardly on his calf and splintering it. That crack he felt, that absolute, terrifying agony, has always been the most pain he’s ever experienced in his memory.  _

 

Until now, that is, when his wings shatter into a million pieces at his back, dousing every bit of his being in a mind-splitting agony worse than death itself, charring him from within and without...before his body can no longer take the pounding and everything fades to the darkest, darkest black. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Akira, I should probably stop dragging him through the mud, but we all love beating up our favourite characters. 
> 
> This chapter was such a wild ride to create and pretty tough to pull through ;_; A review would be super appreciated!!


	5. The Intoxication of Isolation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the investigator becomes the investigated.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_ ~Shadow Race Fact!~ _

 

_ Witches are one of the most poorly understood Shadow races of all time. There’s a lot of discourse on what they can and can’t do, mostly due to he sheer unpredictability of their power, even to themselves. Most agree that they are able to perform minor curses and blesses - nothing of significance, causing only slight boons and banes to their targets, and with low accuracy. But very rarely, and when exceptionally angered or inspired, Witches have been known to inflict death upon the living or reincarnate the dead - at the cost of their own life.  _

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The air is clinking with a sound he knows well, the sound of small bottles knocking against each other as someone sorts out medicine with practiced efficiency at a counter. The smell of antiseptic is prickling his nose, and the calm cold of the room is something he’s become very familiar with ever since he moved to Yongenjaya. It’s the feeling of safety, of healing, of a haven to recuperate both body and spirit. 

 

Akira opens his eyes to find himself lying in Tae’s clinic. 

 

What’s new.

 

“Welcome to the land of the living,” Tae scoffs. “How may I make your stay more enjoyable?”

 

“Water,” Akira croaks lamely. 

 

Tae rolls her eyes and tosses him a plastic bottle which still smacks him in the face even though he’s technically managed to catch it. So this is how weak he’s gotten, wow. 

 

“Don’t move. Stitches,” Tae warns as he tries to sit up. “There’s a  _ straw _ , dumbass. Use it.”

 

Akira sips through the straw obediently, lying on his back like the invalid he is. Tae rolls her eyes so many times in succession Akira starts to wonder if it’s a special Mandrake ability to flip your own eyeballs backwards. 

 

“How...bad was it?” he asks sheepishly, already squirming away from Tae. 

 

Tae slaps her xray board so hard that Akira drops the bottle and it hits his face again. 

 

“Broke two ribs, punctured left lung, went into atrial fibrillation due to excessive internal  _ and external _ bleeding,” Tae snaps, shaking her tiny medical hammer at his face. “What else? Want me to break your skull myself?” 

 

“Where are Sojiro and Morgana?” Akira diverts, squirming further away. 

 

“Right outside this room waiting to whoop your sorry ass,” Tae snarks. She runs her hand through her short hair and Akira sees the many bags under her eyes with clarity. His gut constricts with guilt - Tae’s been up all night again, fixing the new mess he’s gotten himself into. 

 

“Thank you, Tae,” he says, unable to look directly at her. “And I’m sorry.” 

 

Tae gives a mirthless laugh. “You’d better be,” she says, wrapping a blood-pressure cuff around his arm. They are silent as she pumps it up and then lets it go with a satisfied hum. 

 

“BP’s normal but...this shit isn’t, Akira. You broke bones and scrambled your organs. It’s never been this bad before. When you were sent in I thought you’d been run over by a train. Guess what - I had to IV Diarahan directly into your bloodstream to save your reckless little life - a  _ record new _ even for me. What the  _ actual fuck  _ did you try this time? Turning into a whale?”

 

“Valkyrie,” Akira admits like the loser he is. 

 

“What the fuck,” Tae confirms. Akira’s sure that his ‘cool stat’, if it even existed at all, has just dipped to a negative in Tae’s mind. 

 

Tae drops her head on the table, clearly dead-beat both inside and out. “Look dude,” she says. “I support you trying to reconnect to your power and all, but you’ve gotta stop being a dumbass about it. Blasting away your body parts by force isn’t going make you a Valkyrie, it’s gonna make you a corpse who wasted all my efforts.” 

 

Akira feels his heart drop to his stomach, his mind hollow. The sensation of utter defeat is everywhere - clogging his throat, numbing his brain, saping the strength from his soul. 

 

“Alright,” he says heavily, pushing away the image of Iwai’s ash-stained face in his mind’s eye. “I admit it’s impossible. I’ll stop.” 

 

“No - what the fuck,” Tae exclaims, her hands up in the air in exasperation. “That’s  _ not  _ what I meant. I simply meant there’s another way to go about this, you moron.”

 

Oh. There...is? 

 

“Another way?” Akira echos stupidly. 

 

“Well..,” Tae stalls, her face showing something other than utter irritation for the first time. “It’s something I’ve been considering for a while, but I didn’t really tell you. Because to be frank, it’s just...really, really risky.”

 

Akira sits up a little even though Tae’s literally just told him not to, but she doesn’t notice, too engrossed in calculating the probabilities and possibilities in her own head of this mysterious new idea of hers. 

 

“But when you were rushed in last night,” she continues, “I realized that the shit you’ve already been doing is  _ waaaay  _ riskier than what I’m about to propose.” 

 

“Live fast, die young,” Akira chants his life’s mantra, tilting his head. “I’m all ears.” 

 

He’s not sure if he should be worried about the fact that Tae’s looking slightly unsure, because Tae almost never looks unsure, no matter how unsure the other doctors look when they see her dubious methods. 

 

“Have you...” Tae begins, “Have you ever considered that what’s holding you back isn’t the Guillotine’s power, but perhaps...”

 

“My own mind? PTSD?” Akira guesses. “Have totally considered before, Doc. I’m smarter than you for once.” 

 

“Shut up, you little ingrate,” Tae scolds, but there’s no real bite in her words. “And so? Do you think so?”

 

There are two ticks of complete silence. 

 

“It’s...a possibility,” Akira finally admits, dipping his head. That’s a blatant understatement. If only Tae knew how many sleepless nights he’s blinked through, how many times Morgana’s got to stop him from tearing his own hair over this hideous,  _ hideous  _ incompetency that he can’t blame on anyone but himself. The Guillotine may have severed his Shadow self, but  _ he  _ was the one who couldn’t call it back, couldn’t get it to come out from the recesses of his trauma where it lurked in its cowardice. What was once second nature to him, what was once like an extension of his very own body, is now a distant phantom, fading faster by the second. 

 

He’s far weaker than he thought, far more spineless than he’d ever imagined. It’s scary how he doesn’t even  _ remember  _ how proper feathered wings feel like anymore. He’s not fit to be an Incubus, an Oni, an Angel, or even a goddamn law student. Maybe someone like him, who couldn’t even master his own mind and get over what’s long gone, didn’t deserve to be a Shapeshifter, didn’t deserve to be  _ anything at all.  _

 

The only thing he can be is who he is right now, and who he will forever be - an outcast lingering in the shadow of his former glory, a bird which flew out of one cage only to to be trapped in another of its own creation. Cruel joke, isn’t it? What a truly joyless end to the little rebel who tried to duel the system. 

 

“Whatever you’re thinking right now, stop thinking it,” Tae says sharply. She knows him too well for his own good, honestly. “I could tell you all about how I’ve beat the exact same self-loathing to manifest as a Mandrake, but that shit’s really sappy.” 

 

She puts a finger on Akira’s chest, right where his pulse is. It’s something she’s started doing since their first days of knowing each other - she’d quickly realized that it calmed him down when he showed up screaming and crying and babbling nonsense (about Cage wardens coming for him) from his first few bad transformations, hallucinations and worst nightmares. 

 

“What I’m saying is, we both know you’ve escaped the physical Cage, but not the Cage of your own mind,” Tae deduces, looking right in to his eyes in a way that didn’t let him look away. She’s staring into his soul, seeing his worst fears being replayed like a grainy record. “Unlocking that would be the key to you being able to access your powers properly again. And to go accomplish that great world-changing shenanigan you’ve planned, whatever it is.”  

 

“I haven’t planned anything,” Akira lies, but Tae does her Mandrake-exclusive eye roll again. 

 

“Whatever, I don’t care,” she declares, except she really does. “I make the proposition, you’ve got to at least hear me out. Deal?”

 

“...deal,” Akira says, frowning. Tae’s ideas are all sketchy, and this one is probably going to take the cake. 

 

“Go back to the Cage,” Tae says, expertly dodging the jet of water Akira spews.

 

“ _ What? _ ” he sputters, because...WHAT?

 

“Yup.”

 

Akira thinks he’s about to cry for real. Is this what he gets for three years of friendship? “Are you so eager to be rid of me?” 

 

“Obviously I didn’t mean go get arrested and get locked up again, you dumb shit,” Tae shoots back. “I meant, go see the Cage again, take a good look and realize once and for all that you’re out and out for good. And go unlock that second door in your own head.” 

 

“Wha...how?”

 

“Don’t ‘how’ me. You’ve got cop friends, haven’t you? Go ask that Nijima to bust you in with her staff ID, and then bust you out. Shouldn’t be that difficult in theory, but still dangerous as heck, so don’t screw up.”

 

Dangerous? Akira would rather attempt a freefall from the top of Tokyo tower to see if his wings will finally sprout. 

 

“M-makoto is never going to agree,” Akira stammers, his hands cold. Go back to the Cage? But...but he thought he was never going to see it again. He thought that Hell had been buried under layers and layers of the new life he’s created for himself. 

 

“Tough luck, she already has,” Tae smirks. “She thinks you should try it too.” 

 

“No,” says Akira, looking at the ground stubbornly. 

 

Tae sighs a very long sigh. “Just what I’d thought you’ll say,” she remarks, scratching her neck. “Look, I’m not gonna force you or anything. You can only confront your fears when you’re ready. Just think about it, ok?”

 

_ I’m not afraid _ , Akira wants to say, but he knows that’s a fat lie. “Ok,” he says, settling for a smaller lie instead. 

 

“Good,” Tae says, looking about as convinced as Morgana when Akira tries to explain that he didn’t order sushi for him because it wasn’t fresh anymore. “Now get out of here, your folks are worried sick.” 

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Between Morgana’s aggressive roasting and Sojiro’s passive-aggressive comments about his intelligence, what Akira really doesn’t need right now is the sight of Akechi Goro sitting at the Le Blanc counter, waiting for its owner to come back and serve him coffee. 

 

“Ugh,” Sojiro grunts when he realizes he’s forgotten to lock up the cafe in his rush. He gives Akira the stinkeye, as if it were all his fault. Which to be fair, it was. 

 

“Luckily Futaba came over to clean up the blood,” Morgana informs, close to his ear. “Or you’ll be a hot catch.” 

 

“I always am,” Akira says, earning a cat bite. 

 

“Hello,” Akechi chirps. “Hope you don’t mind me intruding. I had no idea the shop was closed.” 

 

_ Oh but we totally mind, _ Akira thinks. Luckily the Diarahan has also fixed his headache, or he may have just decided to call it a day and lie down on the cafe steps, Akechi’s judgment be damned. 

 

“Out on an early morning stroll?” Akechi asks conversationally. 

“Follow up appointment for my hip injury,” Sojiro says, tying his apron. Akira marvels at him and his many years of duping busybodies, because it’s an A-grade excuse to explain the bag of medicine he’s carrying.  “Got the kid to accompany me.” 

 

But Akechi won’t be outdone like this. He looks at his wristwatch, which is probably more expensive than Akira’s life. “An appointment at 7 am? You have one...dedicated doctor.” 

 

“Hospitals nowadays are  _ very  _ dedicated,” Morgana says from Akira’s bag, sticking out his head and apparently scaring the shit out of Akechi, because his face as as pale as his well-ironed shirt. 

 

“P-pardon me,” Akechi stammers, gripping the counter. “I didn’t know you were there...er...”

 

“Morgana,” Morgana says prissily. 

 

“Morgana-san,” Akechi placates. “It’s not...common to meet Bakenekos anymore, I was surprised.” He squints at Morgana politely, seemingly looking for something. “Are you...a he or a she?” 

 

Morgana leaps out of the bag at that, transforming halfway and landing with human feet. “I’m a boy!” he mews indignantly, glaring up at Akechi and looking like he was going to chew down the very bar stool Akechi sat on. 

 

“I...see,” says Akechi, his voice a little higher than usual with embarrassment. He offers a hand. “N-nice to meet you, Morgana-kun, I’m -”

 

But Morgana morphs back into cat form and stalks away before Akechi can introduce himself. Akira stifles a laugh. Akechi looks like a bird with really ruffled feathers. 

 

“That cat’s territorial,” Sojiro remarks, a glint in his eye. “It doesn’t like anyone hitting on his human.” 

 

“H-hitting on?” Akechi splutters. “S-Sojiro-san, I assure you, I have no intention - ”

 

“Aww honey, cold as always,” Akira says with his best flirt face. An eye for an eye, sucker. Payback for all the times Akechi’s made him really uncomfortable with his acute detective scrutiny.

 

“A-Akira-kun, what-” 

 

It’s so damn funny to see Akechi paralysed for moment as Akira leans in close - maybe a bit  _ too  _ close, seemingly attempting to sling an arm over his shoulders before bumping him in the shoulder with a fist at the last possible moment. 

 

“Take a joke, senpai,” he said lightly. Sojiro snorts. 

 

“You had me for a moment,” Akechi breathes, looking so relieved that Akira is a little offended. He may not be Akechi-level hot stuff, but he...has his merits, ok? 

 

The one good thing about this mildly disgusting exchange is that Akechi seems to have completely forgotten he’s here to gather more incriminating evidence.

 

“Getting coffee this early even on a weekend?” Sojiro asks, clearly trying to distract Akechi long enough for Akira to slip back up into his room.

 

“It’s a bother to make breakfast just for one,” Akechi explains. “So I just eat out after my morning run.” 

 

Akira knows he should be heading up, but for some reason, the two pieces of information he just caught are enough to make his feet stay put. One, that Akechi lived alone, and another, that Akechi goes for inhumanly early morning runs, even on Saturdays. Judging by his pristine airs and the way he seems to have his life planned out to the T, Akira would have imagined Akechi to be the spoilt only-child of a really wealthy and wholesome family. 

 

And definitely not a student living alone, who apparently has the discipline to exercise so early in the morning on top of going to law school and managing a career as a Shapeshifter Hunter. 

 

What sort of strange creature is his would-be-captor, exactly? 

 

“I wish Akira here could have his shit together like you,” Sojiro scoffs. 

 

“Being a bum is also an art,” Akira says delicately. Sojiro retreats into the kitchen, having given Akira his one chance to escape, and giving up upon seeing that it wasn’t taken. 

 

“Your uncle’s hilarious,” Akechi remarks, sipping his coffee. He’s ordered something not on the menu, and Sojiro has actually managed to serve it up. Where the hell did Sojiro even get maple syrup anyway? And why the hell is Sojiro being so nice to the enemy? Is that the plan?

 

“And I’m not?” Akira says, putting a hand on his chest in mock offense. 

 

“You’re not,” Akechi confirms. 

 

“You hurt me so, honey,” Akira returns, unable to resist. 

 

Akechi untangles his fork from his pancakes and fake-jabs Akira in the eye with it. And just as Akira picks up a spoon to return the attack, he notices the many dark rings under Goro’s usually sharp red eyes. 

 

“You look half-dead,” he says before he realizes it, his mouth working on its own accord all of a sudden. Forget Sojiro, is  _ he  _ socializing with the enemy now? But it’s too late to turn back, he’s already missed his one getaway chance just now. “Coffee isn’t always replacement for sleep, you know.”

 

Akechi manages a wry smile that is very unlike his usual. It’s like a sad little grin mixed with a grimace, and it’s a such a genuine look on him that it’s a bit...disconcerting. It challenges Akira’s world view. 

 

“I know,” he says, and says nothing more for once. He just looks down at his coffee. 

 

And Akira has nothing to say either. 

 

Well this is awkward. He’d been counting on chatty Archangel-kun to elaborate. 

 

“Bad...day?” Akira tries, hoping for his life that it won’t trigger Akechi to flip the counter and arrest him at once. 

 

But Akechi just gives a humourless chuckle. “You could say that, I suppose.” He doesn’t say any more after that either, but at least he’s unfolded his arms and his demeanor seems a little more open. 

 

“Even top-student Archangels can have bad days,” Akira muses out loud. “I’ve been enlightened.” 

 

He’s really fishing for a laugh, but is really taken aback when he gets a sigh instead. It’s probably the first time he’s ever heard Akechi sigh, and the sound is surprisingly human, surprisingly...relatable. 

 

Oh god. Is he  _ sympathizing  _ with the enemy now? Did Tae take out a portion of his brain to sell to the black market when he was unconscious? 

 

“Say Akira,” Akechi suddenly says, and Akira doesn’t miss that he seems to have accidentally forgotten the suffix ‘kun’. “Is it fun to live in a cafe?” 

 

_ Fun? Living in a cafe? _ What an...odd question. 

 

“That’s an odd question,” Akira regurgitates his thoughts. “Care to elaborate?” 

 

Akechi’s eyes seem to acquire more bags by the second, if that’s possible. Do Archangels need to sleep? They always seem so transcendent in full manifestation, but maybe they  _ are  _ just mere mortals after all. 

 

“I mean, is it fun to live with Sojiro? And see so many customers everyday? And have people come over to visit...” Akechi’s short ramble derails rapidly as he seems to suddenly realize what he’s doing. He summons a template smile from his briefcase of template smiles and pastes it on his face at lightning speed. Akira’s almost impressed at how fast the mask comes on - that’s some serious acting skills. Has Akechi ever considered being an actor? 

 

“Ah, what am I saying. I’m sorry, forget I asked, Akira-kun.” 

 

_ That was hella random, alright, _ Akira internally agrees.

 

“I live with Sojiro and his adopted daughter Futaba,” he says instead. “They’re like father and younger sister to me. And while Futaba is such a little shit, I guess you can say it’s...fun. Like...really warm and happening and full of daily lols...I guess? So it’s fun...living in a cafe, I suppose.”

 

Ah goddamnit. Akira’s so not smooth he’ll can probably cling onto steep slopes with just his feet like the goats in that craving mineral meme. What sort of reply was that? 

 

“Is...that so?” Akechi says, more to himself than anyone else. He summons a different type of template smile, one that shows less eyes and more teeth. “Good to know you’re living well. Just watching out for a kouhai, you know. It’s a tough city to live in.” 

 

Annnnd....the bullshit’s back. That’s a pity, because strange as the situation is, real Akechi is actually not so bad to hang around with. 

 

“I’m broke, give me money,” Akira says, putting his own mask back on as well, because his competitive self doesn’t want to lose the faking game, especially if it’s with his destined enemy.  

 

“Funny,” Akechi says, totally ignoring his outstretched hand. 

 

And they sit in something almost like companionable silence for a while as Akechi finishes his breakfast and Akira scrolls through social media feeds mindlessly. He needs to ask Tae to check his self-preservation instincts, because today, they seem to be seriously malfunctioning. He’s sitting in a cafe with his Hunter, both of them way too relaxed, like a normal bro with a normal bro. 

 

And from his sneaky glances at Akechi, it seems that he’s not the only one malfunctioning today either. Maybe today is just a strange day when the stars align in a specific formation that makes everyone slightly (or very) crazy. Gotta ask Futaba to check that up. 

 

And the crazy seems to persist, because when Akechi stands up to leave, there’s a desolate look on his face that he didn’t think to hide because he didn’t think Akira would be looking at him. Akira can’t place what it is exactly, but it’s a look he remembers knowing well from his distant past...a memory of an unspeakable emotion just teetering on the brink of recollection. 

 

The celestial crazy motivates Akira to offer to walk him five minutes to the Yongenjaya station, and motivates Akechi to actually accept. It’s only when Akira’s turning back to the cafe, all alone, does he really place the previously indescribable expression on Akechi’s face. 

 

It’s been described by great poets as the ‘poverty of the self’, the ‘intoxication of isolation”. Whatever fancy schmancy term people liked to call it, it meant the same thing. 

 

It’s the look of one who knows that he is not  _ really  _ wanted by anyone, anywhere. 

 

Akechi is - despite holding the world in the palm of his hand - lonely. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lol I've surprised myself...I've actually updated 2 days in a row??? What's with this sudden rush of inspiration, am I turning into Yusuke
> 
> After the previous espresso depresso chapter, I'm relieved to be back to the trololo. The bad news is it's going to spiral downwards as the plot thickens, the good news is that Akira's skin also thickens and he gets a grip on himself.


	6. The Ebony Clock

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_ ~ Shadow Race Fact ~ _

 

_ Incubi and Succubi are a relative young race in the history of Shadowhood. They absorb miniscule amounts of energy from the people they have bonds with throughout the day as a vital supplement to their daily food intake and will perish if they are forced to live alone. They are extremely misunderstood by the general public and seen in very bad light - they are thought to be heartless seducers who form relationships only for their own benefit. They have excellent night vision and are able to manifest wings and fangs, only at night.  _

 

_ There is a very rare sub-genus of Incubus/Succubus known as the Yakshini who are widely regarded as a race as dangerous as Shifters. Rather than collecting trace amounts of energy from others, Yakshini must consume human blood and flesh to survive. This makes them many times more powerful and deadly than a regular Incubus/Succubus. As they are a threat to public safety, the Ministry is very proactive in hunting down those who manifest as Yakshini.  _

 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Sojiro won’t let him help out (again) when he’s back, and there’s no school. He can’t attempt transformation without earning the highest level of damnation from everyone he knows, so there’s nothing for Akira to do than be the attic recluse he is until Sojiro heads home for the night. There’s a sliver of time between Sojiro’s departure and Morgana’s return (from his post-dinner walk) everyday when Akira can tiptoe out of the cafe and avoid sleeping at 8pm. It’s his cat-imposed curfew for days he busts his back. 

 

And with uncharacteristic luck, he makes it to Yongenjaya station undetected today. (Take that, Morgana.) The trains are actually breathable at this time on a weekend evening, and Akira finds himself wandering about in Shibuya a little sooner than expected. There isn’t enough time to walk to Iwai’s shady little shop, have a shady little conversation and get back, so Akira plays with fire by lounging around the periphery of the police post. 

 

Makoto’s shift ends in another fifteen minutes, so Akira glances at postings on the police noticeboard from afar. He debates taking a selfie with the mug shot of his eighteen-year-old self just for comparison, just for the wry thrill of snubbing it in the Ministry’s faces when he’s finally re-arrested and they snoop through his phone. His younger self sports face more sunken than the Titanic, eyebags that are a little too excessive to be considered fashionable and a head of overgrown black hair of the sort Sojiro probably sported in the swinging 70s (or the 1700s). Escaped convict, it says, naturally. Wanted for violent behavior, arson, being a public menace and of course, the ultra-illegal  _ shapeshifting _ .

 

Iwai did the ‘violent behavior’ and ‘arson’ parts - and he was indeed rather unimpressed to see all the credit attributed to Akira. And as for ‘public menace’, Akira could almost hear the ‘pfffts’ of the passersby as they glance at his scraggly pre-pubescent mug and consider the chances. Nobody has a spare shit to give to a lame teenage shapeshifter when there are way cooler convicts on the loose, like that badass poster of Iwai right next with long hair and an actual beard, wanted for abetting and assisting jailbreak.  _ Scary. _

 

Strong hands wrestle his from behind, almost spraining his wrist. 

 

_ They got me _ , Akira thinks, for a split second, before his captor catches him by the waist, princess style. 

 

“Noob,” Makoto says. 

 

“Just out of practice,” Akira gasps, scrambling to his feet like a noob. 

 

“Uh huh,” Makoto dismisses. She squints at him, giving him several chills as the harrowing effect washes over. The people walking around them give them a wider berth, hastening their footsteps to duck out of her unnerving gaze. 

 

“Sorry,” she says, when she sees Akira fidget with his right sleeve. “Can’t help it. I wish I can just switch it off.”

 

Akira points to himself. “Can’t switch off this swag either. ” He fails to duck a smack to the head. 

 

“If you’re still alive enough to make a wisecrack, you can go to the diner with me for a talk.” 

 

“I...my chest...I can’t breathe...”

 

He fails to duck another smack, and is hauled by the bag strap to the diner. Makoto sits him down and orders for him without even asking if he’s already eaten (he hasn’t) and orders twice as much for herself.

 

“So,” she begins forebodingly. 

 

_ I heard you screwed up, made omelettes of your insides and turned your room into a budget movie murder scene _ , Akira thinks she was going to say, but she cuts straight to the chase. 

 

“The Cage,” she continues. “When are we going?”

 

“Uh, never?” Akira tries. He eyes the cutlery beside Makoto’s arm warily, but she doesn’t look like she’s going to throw them at him so soon. 

 

“Akira,” she says seriously. Akira doesn’t need to feel the harrow to know that she’s really not in the mood for any more artful diversions. 

 

“I can’t do it,” he says, staring at the fabric of his jeans. 

 

“But you want to,” Makoto says. And Akira thinks she’s wearing a smirk, but when he looks up, she’s perfectly serious. 

 

Akira is suddenly very interested in the loose thread on his sleeve. “Despite what I look like, no, I don’t have a jail kink.” 

 

He hears Makoto’s eye-roll. None of his sass ever works on her, or anyone for that matter - he wonders why he tries. 

 

“Your kink is self-mutilation,” Makoto deadpans. She puts her glass on the table with an intimidating  _ clack _ . “But let’s be honest here...you’re kinda curious, aren’t you?”

 

“Curious to see if they’ll drill a shackle through my ankles when I get re-arrested? Already know they will, so no, not that curious.”

 

Makoto fries Akira’s bravado with her glare.  

 

“Will you stop it?” she grits. “I’m trying to help you here, so can you chuck that self-pity for five minutes?”

 

Akira scrunches his napkin in his hand and looks to the side, lips sealed in a thin line. Makoto’s silence indicates that she realises she’s gone too far, and now her lips are pursed too. 

 

“Look,” she finally huffs, crossing her arms one way, then the other. “That came out rude, I’m sorry. What I really mean is - you’re not the kind to text me out of the blue if you weren’t already short-circuiting your brain over-analyzing this. You don’t want my ‘advice’, you want me to talk you into actually doing it. So that’s what I’m doing.” 

 

“I...” Akira begins. 

 

But Makoto’s cornered him good. He feels a grimace on his face, his head shaking involuntarily at the ridiculousness of it all. 

 

“I...often wonder...how everyone’s doing,” he admits grittily. 

 

“I don’t blame you, I would too,” Makoto sighs. “And that’s not the only reason, am I right?” 

 

Akira checks out his shoes now.

 

“What...other reason can there be?” he says carefully. 

 

Makoto leans forward, doing the harrow on purpose, probably.  “You’re certain you’ll get re-arrested one day,” she says simply.

 

Akira fidgets in his seat. “And so?”

 

“And so you insanely, self-sabotagingly, want to see how bad it really is all over again, so you can do some mental preparation for the day you have to live in that hellhole again,” Makoto glares harder. “Like an orientation trip, or something.” 

 

Her words go in circles in his brain, like a moth that’s trapped in a light. Against his will, he feels his jaw clenching, and the air around him seems suddenly frigid, like a fog of despair that’s descended all around them. 

 

“That’s not what I -”

 

_ That’s not what I was trying to do? _ But no, he couldn’t bring himself to say it. 

 

“And as for why you want to do that,” Makoto continues, each word a pulse of pain ringing through old scars, “is because you think you deserve to be there, ultimately. I know you too well, Akira. You may put up an act of being all nonchalant and funny and oh-so-over your past that you can crack jokes about it, but you really haven’t moved on. You...you don’t actually believe you can end this cycle at all, because you haven’t even managed face yourself, much less the Ministry. You can’t see a way forward, and so you’re subconsciously...just looking for a way to give up.” 

 

_ Give up?  _

 

Akira is surprised to see his fist on the table, and hear the clanging of cutlery as they hit the floor. And he’s even more surprised to hear the piercing fury in his voice. He doesn’t even realize that he’s stood up, and his nails almost bent backwards from how hard they’re are digging into his palm. A few alarmed diners turn around, but for once in his life, Akira is done with making himself inconspicuous. 

 

To hell with that. To hell with hiding, with pretending, with...everything. 

 

“ _ Give up?”  _ he hisses.  _ “ _ I’ve been trying and trying  _ and trying _ this whole  _ fucking  _ time, nearly killing myself, nearly - “ 

 

The words are lodged in this throat, and try as he might, he couldn’t get them to roll off his tongue. The surge of confusion and anger and the heavy  _ agony  _ in his chest, having found no outlet through his voice, threaten to spill forth from his eyes. Makoto’s face is a shocked blur through the rage and tears. She’s standing up, alarmed, saying rapid words, reaching out a hand, but Akira barely registers it. 

 

He swallows a few times, desperately trying to hold back a deluge with a few rapid blinks, but it really isn’t working. He knows this feeling - it’s how he feels right before he’s going to say something he’ll regret for a long time, but he’s helpless in stopping himself. 

 

Just like how he’s helpless for every single fucking thing in his life. 

 

“So this is what you think of me,” he chokes, and it’s taking all the energy he doesn’t have to keep the tremor out of his voice. His ears are ringing and his head is numb, his heart is rioting in his ribcage and his feet just want to bolt somewhere, anywhere. 

 

“A-Akira, I -” 

 

“Save it, Officer. Don’t waste your time talking to a criminal.” 

 

And then suddenly, way too quickly, he finds himself out on the streets, discovering how difficult it is to shrug on a coat when he’s both walking 3 miles an hour and jittery with fury. People around him are jumping out of the way, glancing after him and muttering trivial complaints at each other, but Akira has no fucks left to give today. He burrows into the train station by instinct, and this very same instinct leads him to the crossroads of Shinjuku. It refuses to relinquish control of his mind until he finds his hand on the door handle of one particular shady bar. 

 

He takes his first proper breath in thirty minutes. Cool night air is an antidote for many things, of which irrational angst is one. 

 

Now, if only he discovered this  _ before  _ he blurted rubbish and hightailed out of the diner like a cliche sitcom character, right? 

 

“You gonna come in, or you gonna fix your problems by hypothermia out there?” Lala-chan says right behind him. Goddamnit, he’s so out of it he hasn’t even noticed the door open. 

 

“Problems?” Akira says with his trademark wry smile. “I don’t have problems.” 

 

“And I don’t have makeup on,” Lala-chan snorts. “Come on, you sad little thing.”

 

Akira would very much like to protest that, but he thinks about it for two seconds and realizes that everything but ‘little’ was spot on. And compared to Lala-chan, even the ‘little’ was accurate. He takes the same seat he’s always taken, the one right in the middle of the bar, and plants his face squarely on the table. It’s a good thing it’s too early for Crossroads to have many customers, and everyone seems to be sitting rather far away, absorbed in their own little miasmas of depression and bad coping mechanisms. 

 

“So?” Lala-chan coaxes. “Did you break someone, or did someone break you?”

 

“Makoto dumped me,” Akira mumbles into the polished surface. 

 

Lala-chan snorts again. “She probably knows a gay ass when she sees one,” she smirks. “Like I do.” 

 

Akira does not budge an inch.

 

“So? She gave you a lecture for your inappropriate Grindr profile or something? Or she yelled at you about something that you should probably be an adult about, but you totally weren’t?” 

 

“I have a very adult way of escaping my problems.” 

 

Lala-chan takes a long-suffering puff of her cigarette. At times like this, Akira wonders if she’s secretly just Sojiro in drag. Wow. Extinguish that thought at once, brain. 

 

“I...said something...really bad, probably,” Akira grunts, feeling his body and his ego deflate like a lost balloon. 

 

“Like ‘I hate your cat’ kind of bad, or ‘I ran over your cat but that’s not my problem’ kind of bad?”

 

“The ‘I don’t want to listen because you’re being too real’ kind of bad.”

 

Lala-chan scoffs. “That’s not too bad.” 

 

“I called her to help me, then walked out on her when she was trying to help,” Akira peels his face off the table. “It’s bad, Lala-chan.”

 

“Now it is,” Lala-chan agrees. 

 

“She’ll never talk to me again.”

 

There’s a clink, and something cool touches his elbow. Lala-chan has slid over a drink, probably some sort of soda, because for some reason he’s always the bumbling 17-year-old who’s fresh out of the Cage in Lala-chan’s eyes.

 

Or Lala-chan doesn’t want to be responsible for the taxi bill when he goes home not knowing the sky from the ground. That probably, yeah. 

 

“Last I checked, she was the one who hauled your ass to the doctor when your stitches broke during one of your shifts,” Lala-chan sighs, rolling her eyes at the memory. 

 

That, well...did happen. Akira may have stretched a  _ little  _ too far when cleaning the bar counter, and he may or may not have bled all over Lala-chan’s carpet in silent panic. If not for Makoto arriving in record time and actually ripping up her own cardigan to wrap him up, some customer would have noticed, called an ambulance, and he’d have been  _ done for _ . 

 

_ God  _ did he feel like a girl on her first period that day. He tells Lala-chan as much, and she barks a loud laugh. 

 

“Honey, honey,” she chides. “What makes you think someone who gives this many fucks is petty enough to ditch you over a tiny-ass spat?”

 

Akira spins his drink between his fingers. Oh, but what if this is the tiny-ass spat to end all spats?   
  


Lala-chan makes a face like she knows exactly what he’s thinking. She doesn’t know exactly, of course, but she’s an  _ Orobas _ , so she’s probably guessed right anyway. 

 

“You’re guys probably - “ and Lala-chan stops short, her eyes growing larger. “Whoa - honey, you fought about visiting...the Cage?”

 

“Yay,” Akira says, raising his glass. In the dim light of Crossroads, the scars on his wrist seem darker, fresher, more sinister. 

 

Lala-chan actually smiles, in a way that makes Akira feel like he’s an overgrown toddler who’s finally learnt how to say “Lala”.  

 

“Do you want to?” 

 

Akira dips his head, figuring that tonight’s not the time to use that lie counter of his. It’s difficult to choke out - his throat is dry and his fingers are clammy, but he manages. 

 

“I do.” 

 

“So why did you fight about it?”

 

_ Because...there are too many stitches on his back, old and new, broken and healed, and he’s afraid he can’t bring himself to...he’s afraid he’ll just... _

 

“I’m terrified I’ll turn myself in,” Akira whispers through clenched teeth. 

 

_ He can already see it. It’ll be easy. He’ll walk up to a Valkyrie guard and -  _

 

“Would Makoto let you do that?” 

 

...

 

“...no.”

 

“So why are you so terrified?” 

 

“Because - “ Akira stops, because suddenly, Lala-chan’s stolen all his excuses from his excuse counter.

 

“Because I...it didn’t occur to me...that I don’t have to do this alone anymore,” he says, marvelling at the surprise in his own voice. 

 

Lala-chan looks smug. She’s polishing her glasses smugly, with her eyebrows raised in a smug way. 

 

And all of a sudden Akira’s is heartbeat picking up - something in his chest is stirring and bubbling, something like a bit of faith and...dare he say it, a bit of hope. 

 

“What...do I do now?” he whispers. 

 

“What do  _ you  _ want to do?”

 

He doesn’t have the faintest idea, but maybe the repressed, angry 17 year old inside him - who hungers for something fair in the world to happen  _ just for once  _ \- does. 

 

“I...show her I’m sorry by asking her to sneak me in,” Akira says. “And I’ll buy her a new cardigan.”

 

“You haven’t?” Lala-chan says incredulously, like he’s broken the most important rule of the Gentleman’s code. 

 

“I have,” Akira says. He’s slightly offended that Lala-chan thought otherwise. “But she likes them, so I’ll buy her another one.” 

 

“For someone who doesn’t swing that way, you sure know your way to a woman’s heart,” Lala-chan snorts. 

 

“I swing every way,” Akira clarifies. 

 

“We’ll see,” Lala-chan huffs. 

 

Akira squints at her, turning a thought around in his head. 

 

“What,” Lala-chan says. 

 

“Can Orobases plant thoughts in people’s heads?”

 

Lala-chan looks at him like the toddler she thinks he is. 

 

“Then wouldn’t I have planted many suicidal thoughts in that goon’s head by now?” she scoffs, pointing at Minister Shido, who just happens to be on TV. “No, I can’t. Your sudden and long-overdue wisdom about this fiasco is your own.” 

 

“Ah,” Akira says. 

 

“To your success,” Lala-chan replies. 

 

She slides him another drink, and this time, there’s alcohol. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Omg I'm sorry for the late update, it's been more than a month ;_; This chapter was exceptionally difficult to write and I had to scrap a few attempts, hence the delay. 
> 
> But I would really love a review on this chapter! Or you can come talk to me at @KeyadeArt on twitter :)

**Author's Note:**

> A comment would be lovely!! Let me know what you think & what you speculate! :)


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